


Memories Aren’t Foundational (Prinxiety)

by mt_reade



Series: Sanders Sides Short Stories! [12]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Exes, Getting Back Together, M/M, Memories, Nostalgia, Past Relationship(s), Roman hasnt, Virgil’s moved on, i honestly don’t know how to tag this, it’s an imagery and dialogue based scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23889493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mt_reade/pseuds/mt_reade
Summary: Virgil settles into his chair a little more as the memories of the nights that he and Roman spent at that restaurant float to the front of his mind. The late night walks home, with their joined hands swinging between them like the pendulum on a clock, steady but leisurely, in a way that tolled out that they had all the time in the world."I really loved you then." Virgil says."And I loved you." Roman returns.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders
Series: Sanders Sides Short Stories! [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721833
Comments: 16
Kudos: 45





	Memories Aren’t Foundational (Prinxiety)

**Author's Note:**

> TW: mentions of sex, NOTHING LIKE THAT THIS ISNT EVEN A LITTLE NSFW I PROMISE, it just comes up in conversation at one point.

"I'm glad we did this." Roman says, just after taking a sip of his coffee. He sets the cup down in front of him, looking into it thoughtfully, like the drink itself is stirring thoughts in him. The mug is a light blue-grey colour, and the coffee inside is emitting small amounts of flowering, hazy steam. It looks rather quaint against the lacy tablecloth of the small table. "You know, just to see."

"So am I." Virgil agrees, he has two hands wrapped around his own matching mug. Apparently, the cafe has a whole set of them. They're all the same. Opposite of the pair at the table, who contrast starkly. One cares about their hair, the other about their makeup. One wears white, the other black. The table they sit at is washed in a soft grey light from the cloudy sky outside of the window beside them. It's just past midday, but the gentle pitter patter of the rain makes the day feel young, and incredibly quiet. The cafe is next to empty. So much so, that the barista had gone into the back room sometime ago, leaving the two of them, for the most part, alone.

Roman offers him a small smile. "After all these years..."

Roman had hardly recognized Virgil when he'd walked in. He looks... so _different_. Not in a bad way, of course. A good way, even. Okay, well, not good like _that_ , but-- He has purple hair now. He still has his bangs, the ones that fall over his face when he ducks his head, or fans out across the pillow when he sleeps. But they're now dipped in a noticeable violet colour. The purple, it seems, is actually all over the place. He's wearing a hoodie that Roman has never seen before. It's still black, of course. That's Virgil's comfort colour, but there are purple plaid patches adorning the sleeves of it, and it's clear that Virgil's skill as a makeup artist has improved. His winged eyeliner is sharp, and the smoky eyeshadow was clearly applied with a skilled hand.

"Yeah." Virgil says, looking out onto the vacant street, eyes focusing intently on a green car that's parked in front of an apartment complex across the way. "Because it was pretty important, you know, because we--"

"Mhm. All my life, uh..." Roman clears his throat, and shifts in his chair a bit. "Very important."

Virgil nods, glancing at him apprehensively. "Right. So to never have seen each other again would've been--"

"It would have been impossible." Roman says, chuckling a little.

Virgil's grip tightens slightly around his cup. "...It would have been sad, anyway."

Disquiet.

Roman takes another sip from his coffee, and Virgil glances over at him again. He's surprised by how much Roman looks the same. Obviously, Roman is still... Roman. He's still the same person that Virgil had known years ago, but it was as if he hasn't changed at all. He has the same sweeping beach-wave hairstyle, and the same red jacket hanging off of the back of his chair. He's also somehow no more, nor less tanned than Virgil remembers. It's a bit off putting. Virgil never really took Roman as someone who settles.

They sit in silence for a while, Virgil preoccupying himself by stirring his thoroughly mixed coffee with a teaspoon. The coffee shop smells like fresh baking. Like the remnants of flour on a countertop, and the cloves and cinnamon still disturbed and sharp in the air. The floors are textured and characterized. So is the whole cafe. It looks as though it's as old as the town itself. Not that either of them mind. It's nice, and feels suitable for two young men with a blanket of nostalgia around their shoulders.

"Hey, do you remember that italian restaurant?" Roman says, eventually.

"No..." Virgil frowns a little, what kind of a question is-- "Oh, wait, yeah. On the corner, was it?"

Roman shrugs, running a thumb over the rim of his coffee cup. "Is that the one with those bushes outside?"

Virgil leans on his hand with a quiet tut, as he tries to recall it. His eyebrows knit together."No, I think I'm mixing it up with--"

"I can picture the waiter." Roman says, smiling a bit to himself, in that slanted grin that he doesn't realize he has.

Virgil thinks for a moment longer, before shaking his head slowly. "Nope. Can't get the waiter."

"Oh come on," Roman says, confounded. "The one with the mustache?" Roman twists an imaginary mustache on his face between two empty pinched fingers. He laughs, eyes glazed over with reminiscent fondness. "He always smiled so much when we came in."

Oh, oh yeah! Virgil does remember. He points a definitive finger at his counterpart as he recalls it. "You used to always get the spaghetti carbonara."

Roman leans on his hand a little, which he props on the table by his elbow. "I don't remember eating." He confesses. "I was too busy looking at you, probably."

Virgil lets the heat rising up his neck warm his smile. It's a gentle flicker of flame, barely there, but welcoming. It gives off light, but it's fragile. He settles into his chair a little more as the memories of the nights that he and Roman spent at that restaurant float to the front of his mind. The late night walks home, with their joined hands swinging between them like the pendulum on a clock, steady but leisurely, in a way that tolled out that they had all the time in the world. "I really loved you then." Virgil says.

"And I loved you." Roman returns.

Virgil presses his coffee mug to his lips.

Virgil's in it now, the memories arriving like they're rising from the floorboards beneath them. He can recall one in particular, the sight of yellow and the way his nose was slightly stuffed from the allergies, but how he couldn't be bothered, because he was too busy watching Roman amongst it all. It's a memory that's so small, and insignificant, but it's always the one that he thinks of first. It's the one that gets blown into his dreams from time to time by a sideways wind.

"I always remember you standing in that field." Virgil shares, allowing the image of Roman's arms outstretched as the wind picked up his coat to fall from his lips.

"Where was that?" Roman asks, picked upand taken along in the memory sharing.

But Virgil doesn't hear him, lost in the world of the past. "All those buttercups." He whispers.

Roman's eyes are distant, as if he can actually see the image he describes. "I've got a really clear picture of you running ahead of me down a street." He can envision the way Virgil picked up his feet so that he wouldn't completely soak his sneakers in the rain, and how he had had his hood pulled up over his head to combat the wind. He had been laughing, beckoning to Roman and shouting for him to hurry up as Roman chased him towards... "We were running for a bus, I think."

"Oh, oh, do you remember that hotel?" Virgil asks, screwing his eyes shut as if it's just teasing at the corners of his vision. As if the visual is blurry, and it can't get transmitted all the way through. He doesn't even wait for Roman to answer before he starts to grasp at the straws of the weaved memory. He tries to get them out before he forgets it. "We took a hotel room for a couple of hours, there was green wallpaper... and we just stood there kissing."

He opens his eyes, to see Roman back in the room with him. They're sitting across from each other again. Neither are sure where they went, but the journey was brief, and they're back now. They're back in the quiet coffee shop, with nothing but their years passed as witnesses. Roman rubs the back of his neck, unsure if he should say what he's thinking or not, because this is a very real Virgil who sits across from him, and he doesn't want to overstep. But the mood they've created is so vulnerable. It's like the hours past midnight at a junior high school sleepover, where there's unknown bravery from tiredness and the walls lower, and in the darkness, someone whispers: _'you wanna know a secret?'_

"I remember the first time." Roman says, shyly, tentatively.

But then Virgil laughs. It's not a full out laugh, no it's just a quiet snicker. But the way it bubbles from him is enough to wash away Roman's nerves with a smooth wave of relief. Virgil shakes his head. "No way. That's got overlaid by so many other times, I can't-- Oh my god, I remember once, in a kitchen. The kitchen at your friends house?"

Roman's eyes light up. "Which friend?"

Virgil shrugs. "I could never remember your friend's names."

Roman thinks for a minute, whose house did they go over to often? "Was it Patton's? Oh, maybe Remy's? Probably Remy's."

Virgil tries his hardest to remember. He presses a hand over his mouth, and his eyes search around aimlessly for reminders. He lets out a small sigh. "I don't know... Do you remember it?"

"I might if I knew which house." Roman says, trying to picture it. He then flushes a bit, and hides the profile of his face with his hand, even though there's no one else around to see him. His laugh is only a breath, disbelieving. "Did we really do it in a kitchen?" He whispers, eyes wide.

Virgil bites back a laugh of his own as he nods. "Behind the door. We were supposed to be making sure that dinner didn't burn."

"Wow, we're the worst." Roman's cheeks are dusted with pink.

"Yeah, pretty much."

They both take small sips from their coffee, which is now not as warm as their faces. They set them down one after the other, the clink of china against the table is almost unheard. Virgil is shaking his head again, almost absentmindedly, as his eyes meet Roman's own. They're alive and always in awe, as Roman sees the art in the world around him, the way he always has.

It reminds Virgil.

"I mostly remember us just looking at each other." He says.

Roman's eyes flicker down to his coffee at this, and a whisper of a smile is visible on his face; it's tilted downwards, and knowing. "Like that time in the street, when we just stopped."

He can see it, how they had strolled side by side, laughing on and on about something, shoulders brushing and heads stooping to avoid the low hanging tree branches over the sidewalk of their community. The way their eyes met, and the words just fell away along with the rest of the world, and they slowed to a stop. How, for a moment, there was nothing else in the universe but each other, but them.

"I was thinking more of the time when you were sitting on the side of the bed." Virgil explains, watching Memory-Roman perch on the edge of their shared bed, the one in the flat that they used to rent out together. He sees the room from an angle that it is as if he himself had been standing in the doorway, stopping at the sight of his boyfriend, all understanding of why he had come up here, gone. He could see how Roman's face lit up upon seeing him, eyes curious but endearing. Maybe apologetic. If Virgil could remember it right, the tension in his chest makes him think it was soon after a fight. One of many.

Roman takes a drink of his coffee, which now has a bit of a cold nip towards the end of the sip. They've been here a while.

"Was that early on, or... near the end?" He asks, tenuously.

Virgil feels something sink like a stone inside him. Because of course, memories are only fragments of what once was, and not of what exists in the now. The stone hits the pit of his stomach, and he's brought back fully to the coffee shop, and he is grounded by new weight.

"Near the end, I think." He says, voice suddenly quiet.

Virgil's own cup has somehow emptied itself. He doesn't remember when he'd finished off the last of the coffee, but he does know that there's nothing left of it now.

He sets his hand down on the table instead.

Of course, the memories are still around them. They're sitting in the booths, lining up at the counter, walking past them, and entering and exiting in their own time through the front door. Now, a new group of memories step forward.

"You know, I sometimes go past that coffee shop." Roman says, just as quietly. The rain is gentle against the fragile glass beside him.

"Which one?" Virgil breathes out.

"...The one where we kept trying to say goodbye." Roman's laugh is a humourless and hollow sough under his wavering words.

"Oh." Virgil says. He bites the inside of his cheek. "I think I've blotted that whole day out." His eyes cast themselves back out onto the cold cobblestone awaiting them outside of the coffee shop.

A hand is then on top of his own. He feels it.

Warm, and Roman's fingers curve around his wrist slightly at the ends.

Virgil looks at him, tearfully. No, please don't. Don't do this.

"We were really happy." Roman says, breathless and quiet and _hopeful_.

And for a moment, there's nothing in the universe but each other, but them.

And it's lonely.

"Were we?" Virgil asks, daring to glance at Roman before looking away as if the sight had burned painfully. "We used to cry."

The moment passes, and the world is returned beneath their feet. Unforgiving.

"...Did we?" Roman's voice breaks in the middle of the last word.

Virgil pulls his hand away, pressing it into the pocket of his new hoodie. "Sometimes."


End file.
